


And We'll Fly And We'll Fall And We'll Burn

by Memories_of_the_Shadows



Category: Naruto
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Event Fill, Fix-It, Graphic Description, Headcanon, Hijinks & Shenanigans, KakaZabu Week 2019, Kannabi Bridge Mission, Kirigakure | Hidden Mist Village, Light Angst, M/M, Non-binary character, Seven Swordsmen of the Mist Headcanon, Seven Swordsmen of the Mist | Kiri no Shinobigatana Shichinin Shū, Sharingan, Short One Shot, Some Humor, Temporary Character Death, Time Loop, Wordcount: 1.000-5.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-27
Updated: 2019-06-27
Packaged: 2020-05-20 12:08:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19376401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Memories_of_the_Shadows/pseuds/Memories_of_the_Shadows
Summary: He wakes up: not in the watery Hell he was expecting, not even the Pure Lands by some sort of cosmic mistake. No, Zabuza blinks and he is back in a staring contest with Sharingan no Kakashi, the Konohoan outrunning him on a water dragon.





	And We'll Fly And We'll Fall And We'll Burn

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from "Stockholm Syndrome" by Muse.
> 
> All thanks go to [Mysana](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mysana/pseuds/Mysana) and [Uintuva](https://twitter.com/uintuva?lang=en) for the beta! Any remaining errors are mine and mine alone.
> 
> I do not consent to my work being hosted on any unofficial apps, especially any with ad revenue and subscription services, or any website other than ao3 unless I personally cross-posted a work.

Zabuza dies on the bridge he tried not-so-hard to stop from being built, a lifetime of poorly healed wounds, chakra exhaustion, and too much emotion buried too deep meaning he just cannot bounce back from this latest blow. Haku is dead, Yagura still hunts him, and Zabuza has made too many enemies and not enough friends throughout his life.

He wakes up: not in the watery Hell he was expecting, not even the Pure Lands by some sort of cosmic mistake. No, Zabuza blinks and he is back in a staring contest with Sharingan no Kakashi, the Konohoan outrunning him on a water dragon.

A pause, nothing that would make a difference normally, but Zabuza is fighting _Sharingan no Kakashi_.

Water crashes over him, and he drowns--the victim of a stupid rookie mistake--the water freezing over as Haku loses control.

* * *

The Sharingan is there again when Zabuza opens his eyes. Zabuza is not sure what is happening--if this is some kind of trick of chakra--but he’s lived this twice now and switches to something shorter than the powerful but slow water dragon.

Kakashi looks surprised, and determined, and almost demonic right up until he dies on Zabuza’s sword, the little kids who have no business being in hitai-ate crying and screaming in the background.

“P-please don’t k-kill them,” he says around the blood flooding his mask. Zabuza can barely hear him.

“I don’t kill kids, you stupid fuckwit,” he snaps back, angry because he got his name and career trying to prevent that very situation even if he did that by being so much worse than anyone who had done it before. He hears the soft thud of bodies as Haku puts the genin to sleep. Kakashi smiles up at him, blood dripping off his chin.

The fucker looks _relieved_ , almost happy, and Kubikiri Bouchou swallows the drops of a legend’s blood as he dies. He’s still smiling in death, peaceful like something Zabuza has never known. He’s known shinobi before who had a death wish, who wanted nothing more than the end of their lives so long as they didn’t have to do it themselves.

Zabuza feels shivers travel his spine that have nothing to do with Haku’s chakra or his own lack of shirt.

(Who would have guessed Sharingan no Kakashi would be one of them?)

He throws a kunai at Tazuna carelessly, doesn’t even look away from the A-ranked corpse in front of him as the bridge builder dies, just blinks at what his life has become.

* * *

And he’s back to this same moment. (How many times has he been here before? Not more than ten. Please, whatever hell god will take pity on a demon, not more than ten.)

Zabuza throws himself back, away from this enemy nin who _has_ to be messing with his mind. He doesn’t have a reputation for fleeing battle but he does this one because he is as superstitious as the next Kiri nin.

His feet are leading while his mind gibbers into uselessness, and Zabuza can feel Haku close behind, the teen getting slowly more and more agitated.

Sun dapples the brown dirt and leaves which litter the ground, which turns into white foam and tanned wet sand, which turns into water so deep and so blue it is almost black. There is no sun anymore, just a fog that covers everything and feels like home and childhood and everything he had to leave behind.

 _This_ is where it all went wrong. He has to fix _this_ before he can get his life back from whatever sort of Hell this is.

He dies against Yagura three times--each time ending up back in Wave--before he finally notices that the jinchuuriki that rules his village has a Sharingan in his eyes.

* * *

Something has to change, but Zabuza has no idea what.

Some twenty loops in, he tries to just go along with what happened first. The memory is a little faded, what with all the blood and death in between, but he thinks he got most of it.

(What exactly he was doing in bed for a week, he’s not sure, but he’s not going to complain about downtime. Haku, on the other hand, seems jittery, especially after Gato shows up with a broken hand for some reason. Did that happen then too? Who knows. He doesn’t care either, so long as the time loops stop.)

He spends a lot of time just watching Haku, and he has to admit, the little blond brat from Hatake’s team has a point. Haku has always been useful--even as a too small, too thin bratling--but Zabuza knows that Haku is more than that now.

For one, the kid is _hilarious_. He could watch Haku ride herd on Gatou and his minions all day, all snarky sass and deliberate baiting subtle enough that Zabuza is pretty sure Haku doesn’t know he knows. The kid is pretty good at masking sarcasm with politeness, he’ll give Haku that. If he hadn’t been watching the kid for so long, he probably wouldn’t have caught it.

It makes it worse when Haku tries to take the chidori for Zabuza. He knows he doesn’t want to see Haku die smiling again, and, well, fuck, it’s not like he’s not going to come back, right?

The sound Haku makes is inhuman, but Zabuza is swallowed up by a single, wide, red eye.

* * *

He wakes up somewhere different. There’s no enemy across from him, there’s no stupid, ill-trained brats screaming in the background, there’s no comforting presence of Haku closing in, there’s no lake or mist or _any water whatsoever_. It’s like being in a desert, the air is so dry. All that he can see is endless blocks that stretch into a sky that is blacker than even the deepest stormy ocean at night.

Zabuza doesn’t know how long he is in this world that he can’t escape, that doesn’t seem to be a genjutsu but also doesn’t seem quite _real_ either.

Occasionally, he’ll come across caches of supplies and he thinks that it is only that that keeps him alive. But time doesn’t work here either so how would he know? There's no people, nothing that lives or grows and the only thing that he can think of is that he’s finally died and this is hell.

Fuck, if he's in hell, real hell, he died right in front of the kid. Haku will go to the Pure Lands with that memory and Zabuza never did get to tell the kid he was sorry for all the shit he pulled.

Does he need to eat in hell?

An orange-faced demon finds him what feels like months later. Zabuza tries to attack it, tries to kill it because he may be damned but he is not willing to give in to his afterlife quite so easily.

Well, turns out he can bleed to death in hell, the orange-faced demon leaning over him like he's a curiosity that should be studied; a bright, bloody-red Sharingan staring out of the hole in what Zabuza thinks now may be a mask.

“Huh, I didn't put you in here,” is the last thing Zabuza hears in that hellscape before the blackness creeps over his entire range of vision. He's fairly sure it's a hallucination. Blood loss will do that to you.

Demons can't be human. He's known that for a while.

* * *

Zabuza has never known how beautiful the smell of water heavy in the air is until he lived--sort of, his heart’s beating now anyway--through a dry, lifeless hell. _Fuck_ , but he never wants to go to Suna or anywhere else that has less than forty percent humidity ever again, let alone whatever that hellscape was.

Who cares how much gold Rasa claims to be willing to give.

Kakashi, the noble idiot, seems to be struck dumb by something, which is likely why Zabuza hasn't died again yet.

Damn, but the bastard is pretty in the daylight. Zabuza likes the way the filtered, muted sunlight glints off of his grey hair. He probably went mad in that last repeat--if it was a repeat, and not just him getting kicked out of hell for hell if he knows what reason--and Zabuza is just _tired_.

Sick of killing and dying and _never doing anything right_.

That’s why he’s stuck right? He failed in the coup: never mind that none of his supposed allies moved at the same time--hell maybe Mei was right and he should have waited--but how long was he supposed to be okay with his comrades dying and the people he was supposed to protect living in fear? He failed Haku time and again, he failed this mission, and he keeps failing whatever kind of test this is.

A test of faith? Willpower? Whatever, he’s failing it.

“Shit. Fuck. You know what? Just go. I'm so fucking tired of this, Copy-nin, so just go,” he says, a headache brewing behind his eyes and that’s _before_ the so-called ‘Uzumaki’ brat starts yelling about… something. Zabuza really couldn’t care less. Kakashi blinks.

“Maaah, Demon-san? Why do I remember killing you a couple dozen times?” Kakashi asks, voice drawling like that's a _normal_ thing to ask your opponent who is somehow trapped in a time loop due to your poorly understood abilities, thanks Hatake.

Zabuza’s head shoots up, Haku drops from the trees like a little typhoon of ice and fury, and everything goes to hell. Just not the one with all the pillars, thank kami. The normal one, you know, with all the blood.

* * *

It takes a while to calm Haku down, luckily the kid is still pretty resistant to _actually_ killing someone.

(Maiming, apparently, was never off the table, given what he just realized the kid did to Gatou--probably more than once--and what Haku tried to do to Kakashi. He loves that kid, he really does. Best thing he ever got from dumpster diving and that’s how he found that bastard, Kuriarare, who got him into consideration for the Swordsmen. [He’d almost cried when the bastard was killed by that Leaf-nin. Almost. Then he was on his teething mission and things gained perspective with the distance. Like how Kuriarare would have probably died laughing at him anyway for daring to have _emotions_ , let alone any about him.])

Haku is glaring at Kakashi, the kid’s sweet face scrunched up and doing a pretty good job of radiating killing intent. It has the nosy brats squirming anyways. Not enough to get them to _leave_ , but it'll be fine. Probably. They're not Zabuza’s brats to deal with, so any trauma will be Kakashi’s to deal with, ha.

Kakashi is staring at him and it reminds him uncomfortably of the first time he managed to kill the Copy-nin and damn if that bastard hadn't ruined the thrill of killing him by being so kami-damned _happy_ about it. He's a little happy now--with all of them, his brats included, sitting on the ground in a circle, the bridge-builder snoring under a tree which speaks a lot of his opinion about the situation--too, which is very confusing. Zabuza wishes he would stop. 

There's really nothing to do except stare back, and it's starting to feel like an Iwa Standoff between the three of them except Haku would never kill him in a million years and Zabuza is not especially inclined toward killing the kid either. (He never was, no matter _what_ he might have said to the contrary.)

“So…. Do you actually know what is happening?” Kakashi asks when it becomes clear to him that Zabuza is never going to talk first. Haku’s glare kicks up a notch, probably out of some bizarre form of faith in Zabuza’s absolute knowledge of everything. It wouldn't be the first time that's happened.

“I know it has something to do with Sharingans. Probably yours because I keep showing up here.” Zabuza shrugs. Living through it too many times to really remember has dulled the superstitions and negative feelings he has about the situation, but he really doesn't know what Sharingans can do. For all he knows, this is an elaborate interrogation technique. (Well, if it is, it works, he commends Konoha for _not_ killing off all their most useful shinobi for the crime of being born. Random traitors notwithstanding, of course.) “Though there’s an awful lot of them around nowadays for a supposedly dead clan.”

The black-haired bratling makes a noise that is somewhere between furious and inquisitive, only to be cut off by Haku spontaneously freezing the ground underneath him. That was always the kid’s favorite thing to do to people who annoyed either of them and Zabuza wasn’t in the process of killing the annoyance. Zabuza fights to keep the glee at the black-haired bratling’s yelp and the pink-haired bratling’s fumbling off his face.

He's pretty sure he fails when Kakashi pouts at him. Nice try, Hatake, you're still the enemy even if you are pretty in the sunlight. Any ill-advised attraction is probably attachment disorder anyway. He guesses that’s what happens when you’re seemingly stuck with someone for who knows how long the repeats add up to. “Well,” Kakashi says slowly. “Even though you and your _cute_ little apprentice tried to kill me and derail our mission, I _think_ we can come to an arrangement.”

“I am not _cute_ ,” Haku mutters, glare turned on the ground now. Zabuza will never admit it but the kid is actually pretty cute. In the way that baby sharks are cute. It's a Mist thing, it has to be, every other shinobi he’s ever heard their opinion on it seems to find the little things terrifying. (Mangetsu’s kid brother was the same way. Liked swords better than Haku does too. Zabuza wonders idly what happened to him.)

“If this arrangement includes getting out of the time loop I'm in, but I won't give up Kiri secrets.” He just led a coup, it's not like he's a _traitor_ or something. Kubikiri Bouchou shivers under the skin of his back where he is resting against it like the living thing it is at the memory of the coup. So much _blood_ , it was fun up until he lost.

“Maah, that's fine. I'm sure whatever else you tell me will be valuable enough.” The ground under Kakashi freezes too, but the Copy-nin does not react. Haku pouts, and Zabuza laughs. It feels good to laugh again. There's really nothing funny in pillar hell, no matter what jokes the resident demon cracks while it's trying to kill you. Kakashi stares and swallows for some reason before continuing, “maybe we can get a peace treaty between Konoha and Kiri when you're Mizukage?”

It's a pleasant thought, being Mizukage, but he’d have to fight Mei for it by now, and no one in their right mind--or at least adjacent to a right mind, someone with survival instincts at least--would be willing to do that. Still would be nice to be home again, have it feel like home again. Zabuza doesn’t say any of this to Kakashi. Instead, he says, “Sure, sounds great.”

Let Konoha try and hold Mei to anything she doesn’t want to be held to. It’ll be great. And if the crinkle of skin by Kakashi’s black eye that tells Zabuza he’s smiling and that it’s real makes his stomach flip, well, it’s just captor attachment disorder. He’ll get over it.

Eventually.

…Maybe. If he wants to.

He totally wants to. Of course.

It can’t hurt to admire the man for a little while longer, though. The sun and a smile really work wonders on Hatake Kakashi. He’s not even dying this time. No one is.

Zabuza has a good feeling about this time around.

**Author's Note:**

> Soooo, funny thing.
> 
> This was always written as a submission for KakaZabu Week at [Uzushi0](https://uzushi0.tumblr.com/)! Always. Just, you know, it was originally meant for last year's event... But here we are a year later and it's finally done. Just in time for this year's event! (That's not a coincidence...)
> 
> I actually did have fun writing this, even though it took literally a full year for me to do. It has more of my Mist Headcanons, which featured more in my previous submissions. I do want everyone to remember that Zabuza does not have access to all the information and can be an unreliable narrator at times, but I hope everyone enjoys it! Come hang out with me on my [Tumblr](https://sachinighte.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
